Novel Time!

So here's a bit of the novel, at the request of some nice folks on Twitter. Here's to hoping this looks all right when I copy and paste it. *crosses fingers*

CHAPTER ONE

Of all those who came to Ival Nue from Earth, only one fell from the sky. While the others had traveled with a charm or spell about them, which opened a realm-gate and allowed them passage, the woman had merely a stone. Amethystine and small and uncut by jeweler’s hands, it was set into a silver pendant and strung on a fine silver chain. It was one of Ival Nue’s great treasures, though after three hundred years away from that land’s mana-rich air, it had lost much of the power besides realm-passage it possessed.

The woman appeared above the sunken islands of Valendar, where the old realm-gates now laid dormant, on the eve of the weeklong Celebration of Harvest. She was unconscious even before she began to fall. The stone around her neck whipped in the wind, cracking against her chin and jaw, making little lines of blood as she fell headfirst towards Falhast River. She flew, her arms outstretched, her legs beneath the folds of her skirts smacking against each other in the wind’s currents. From five hundred feet she fell, and if not for the mana entering into her system, absorbing into her blood, the impact of soft flesh on lotic river would have killed her. The surge of magical energies, alien to her system, made her like stone, impervious while it gathered in her body.

The water of Falhast River was ice cold at this time of year, just before the land hardened and the killing frost came, but she knew nothing of cold or pain. Nor did she feel the calloused hands that grasped at her long sleeves and pulled her aboard a small river lighter, where she was laid flat atop a large wooden crate, or those that carried her gently onto the galleon from which the lighter had been launched. As they boarded, one of the deck hands rang the vesper bell, signaling the shift change from day to evening crew.

“She fell from the sky, she did, not twenty feet afore our boat, sir,” said the man who was the largest of the three that came aboard. He was heavy-laden with bags and crates of goods from the lighter.

“Aye, she did sir," said the shortest, skinniest, of them. He also carried goods from their evening raid. “A right sylph from up cloudways.”

“Set her in my cabin, please, Captain,” said the speaker to the third man, who was medium-sized and carrying the girl. “Graystock, send for Harrigan to bring our prisoner up from the hold.” The speaker had empery over the ship, even over its captain, Kalfast Vannelth, and though his hauteur often annoyed the crew, if the captain did as he asked, so did they.

“What think you Milord?” asked Mr. Vannelth, setting the woman on the bed in the corner of the dark cabin. The boy closed the door behind them.

“Sylphs are not but legend, Mr. Vannelth. She is something, certainly, but a maid of legendry is most unlikely.” The boy had moved to the desk, which shared a wall with the bed’s headboard, where he lit the three candles atop it, bringing a dim yellow light into that corner of the cabin.

“Her skin is on fire,” said Mr. Vannelth, laying her limp arm across her stomach and covering her with one of the blankets folded at the end of the bed. “She was pulled from the frozen river, she should not be feverish.”

“We must wait for the acolyte’s judgment. His master is the Healer Prophet; he will be able to help her.”


And that's what you get. It's called "At the Ringing of the Vesper Bell" by the way. Hope you like it. Obviously, it's copyright to me. You steal it, I will personally kill you. Cheers!